Consumers are questioning Tesco over a ‘family feast’ advert offering pizza, chips, crisps and fried chicken, but no fresh fruit or vegetables.

“Promoting this selection of fat-laden junk food as an acceptable meal just exacerbates the ever-looming national nutritional disaster”

The advertisement promotes five products with a total price of £4.91. The line reads: “This isn’t a promotion, it’s just great everyday price”.

The advert highlights an ongoing concern with British shopping habits: whether more nutritious foods that require more time and effort to prepare really are as cheap as ready-made frozen meals derided by healthy eating campaigners like Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

‘Family feast’

Ruth Bolton, a food consultant for major tourist destinations and former food technology teacher, feels adverts such as this one from Tesco are sending out the wrong message.

This is the most depressing page I have seen in a newspaper for a long time. Not a fresh vegetable or piece of fruit in sight. Are you willing to share the nutritional value of this ‘family feast’ @Tesco ? pic.twitter.com/RufDtsxHWp

She said to i: “We are all responsible as a society to ensure that our children learn to enjoy interesting and tasty food and consume a balanced and healthy diet.

“Promoting this selection of fat-laden junk food as an acceptable meal just exacerbates the ever-looming national nutritional disaster.

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“A feast should be a celebratory meal with wonderful food. This Tesco ‘Family Feast’ does not even feature a single vegetable or piece of fruit. It’s a cheap and nasty, pile it high, beige time bomb which should come with a health warning.”

Food writer Deborah Robertson said she knows price is a real concern for families, which is all the more reason Tesco should do more to highlight deals on fresh foods.

“There’s every chance you’d end up as pale and wan as an oven chip if you subsisted on this cheap carby ‘banquet’,” Ms Robertson told us.

“Obviously kale smoothies aren’t for everyone, but it would hardly be straying into Gwyneth Paltrow territory to throw in a few veg.

“This stretches the idea of ‘feast’ to the limit really doesn’t it? I don’t want to be snobbish about it, but it would only be a feast in a land of perpetual winter where fruits and vegetables cannot grow.”

Tesco said it promotes a variety of foods and the advert is just one example of what’s available in store.

A spokesman for the supermarket told i: “Our adverts are just one of the ways we let our customers know about the wide range of options available at Tesco.

“This particular advert highlights our great low prices on a range of popular products. We do actively promote healthy products as part of our ongoing work to make healthier choices more visible to customers, including recently promoting handpicked berries and our crop of sweet peaches in newspaper adverts.”

Tesco was the first supermarket to provide free fruit to children in branches.

Free fruit

Tesco has defended its food offers (AFP/Getty)

The company’s ‘Free Fruit for Kids’ initiative, which launched in 2016, meant 20 million pieces of free fruit were handed out in its first year.

Justine Roberts, Mumsnet CEO and founder said of the scheme last year: “Small things – like encouraging healthy eating – can occupy a lot of headspace for parents. Helping children towards their five-a-day while at the same time making the weekly shop less stressful is a thoughtful move from Tesco and one that Mumsnet users have given an unequivocal thumbs up to.”

Declining incomes for the poorest families, government austerity and Brexit have led to the biggest rise in UK poverty since Margaret Thatcher was in power, according to new projections from the Resolution Foundation.

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